TheChronicon Aquitanicum is a set ofannals covering the years 830 to 930 with several gaps and an added notice on the year 1025. It is found in the "great encyclopedia codex",[1] BN lat. 5239, of theAbbey of Saint Martial atLimoges.[2] Its entries are annotations on anEaster cycle.
TheChronicon was first published byPhilippe Labbe in 1653.[3] It was next published in 1717 byEdmond Martène andUrsin Durand under the titleBreve chronicon Normannicum sive Britannicum ("Short Chronicle of the Northmen, or Britons").[4]Georg Pertz edited it for a third time for theMonumenta Germaniae Historica in 1829, using the title by which it is most commonly known.[5]
TheChronicon draws on theAnnales Engolismenses for much of its information. Both sets of annals were used byAdhemar of Chabannes in composing hisHistoriae. In 1025, while copying from BN lat. 5239, he addedmarginal notes of his own to the codex.[6] He returned to Limoges in 1026/7 to add a notice for the year 1025 to theChronicon, recording the deaths of EmperorsHenry II (who actually died in 1024) andBasil II.[7] His notice appears right beneath another already added by another scribe, recording the death of the Viscount Guy of Limoges on 27 October of that year and his burial at Saint Martial's. The notice for 1025 is the only one added after the annals were compiled late in the tenth century.[8] The "false precision" of Adhemar's annal—Henry did not die in the same twelve-month period as Basil, nor did Conrad immediately succeed him—indicates a "sense of global drama and continuity" characteristic of the "excited optimism that reigned at Limoges".[9]